A little over a week ago, the aging Cuban musicians from the Buena Vista Social Club played in the heart of notoriously anti-Castro Miami, and, this time, there were no firebombs, no protests, no violent attacks on the audience.
They played a lilting and sensuously rhythmic music from the old Havana of the 1940s and 1950s, and the mostly Cuban-American audience greeted these players with robust applause, affection and a fond nostalgic remembrance of their lost Cuba.
Of course, the musicians were only there on a movie screen in the U.S. premiere of Wim Wenders' lovely new documentary, "Buena Vista Social Club," inspired by the Grammy-winning, Ry Cooder-produced album of the same name. Indeed, when a few of the musicians showed up last year to play in person for a music industry conference in Miami Beach, hundreds of protesters chanted outside and the convention center hall was cleared briefly because of a bomb threat. Still, the warm response to Wenders' stirring film represents progress of sorts for a community still shaped by the feverish right-wing exile politics that have turned Miami into the nation's most repressive city for artistic free expression. Cuban-born Raquel Vallejo, a member of the Miami Beach Cultural Council, went to last year's bomb-threatened concert and also attended the Wenders screening at the Miami Film Festival. "Isn't it ironic," she told a friend, "that a lot of the people clapping tonight were [probably] the same people involved in the protests outside the convention hall?"
The screening was held in a refurbished movie palace, the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts, that less than three years ago was the site of an ugly near-riot protesting the appearance of Cuban jazz pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba. Hundreds screamed epithets at those daring to hear him, then some spat on incoming audience members or allegedly attacked them with Cuban flags.
Although such protesters are often dismissed as a fringe element, they're bolstered by the shameful silence of the area's political leaders who generally won't condemn even the most violent protests -- including the firebombing of a restaurant that planned to feature a Cuban singer -- as well as by a rabid local Spanish-language radio industry that foments anti-Castro extremism and refuses to play any Cuban music.
In the last few years, though, the climate has softened, pulled along by the seductive, irresistible lure of both newer and older forms of Cuban music. A younger generation of Cuban-Americans is eager to rediscover its roots and seeks out the music without fear. "There's a tremendous difference in the politics of freedom of expression in this community since the Rubalcaba incident," says John De Leon, the president of the local branch of the ACLU. A few Cuban artists have played in clubs without incident in the more tolerant city of Miami Beach, there's a popular music club in Miami's Little Havana called Cafe Nostalgia and, on this Friday night at Gusman, Wenders is the audience's tour guide to the glories of son music from pre-revolutionary Cuba. In addition to all the demographic and political shifts, there's an underlying reason for the growing acceptance: "There's something magical about the music," observes De Leon.
The film celebrates the musicians' performance on the world stage and offers a portrait of their life back in an impoverished Cuba. It artfully mixes footage of their triumphant concert appearances in Amsterdam and Carnegie Hall last year with musician interviews and shots of a new recording session for crooner Ibrahim Ferrer's solo album. The film and the Ferrer album (which includes some of the Buena Vista players) will be released nationally in early June.
Ferrer is the tender heart of the movie. He is a soft-spoken 72-year-old who had been a singer with the legendary Benny Moré band in the 1950s, but who was shining shoes at the time Cooder's team rediscovered him for the Buena Vista album. As he says in the film, he was literally plucked off the street while taking a walk, shoe polish still on him, and brought into the studio to sing that same day.
Wenders' dazzling camera swirls around Ferrer and the accompanying musicians -- including a laid-back Cooder on slide guitar -- as he pours his feelings into love ballads. One of the movie's high-points is a duet on a sinuous bolero, "Silencio," that begins in the studio with Ferrer and a proud 69-year-old Omara Portuondo singing directly to each other from opposite microphones, then cuts to them finishing the song in the Amsterdam concert, Portuondo overwhelmed by the song's emotion and the ovation they receive. She bends her head as tears fall, and Ferrer gently hugs her and brushes the tears away.
Back in Cuba, we see the run-down home of Ferrer and his younger wife as he mentions how life is better for him now. He refrains, though, from explicitly discussing the Castro government's impact on conditions in Cuba; indeed, there are very few political references in the film -- except for, say, a shot of a sign proclaiming something like "The Revolution Is Forever" -- and, surprisingly, the crowd at Gusman didn't boo or hiss them. But for musicians such as Ferrer, their real faith is not in politics, but in music. And, for Ferrer, there's yet another inspiration: He is also a fervent believer in the saints of the Afro-Cuban Santeria religion whom he enshrines with daily flowers and candles in his home. He carries a good-luck totem with the carved head of St. Lazarus, or Babalu-aye, with him wherever he travels.
After being ignored for years in his own country, it's touching to see an awestruck Ferrer wandering along Broadway, and then soaking up the audience's love for him and his music at Carnegie Hall. At the concert's end, a Cuban flag is brought up to the Carnegie stage, and the tumultuous cheering on the screen, a powerful mix of longing and pride and musical ecstasy, was echoed by waves of applause from the Cuban-Americans in the Miami theater.
Emotions ran so high in Gusman that there was scattered crying throughout the crowd. Latin music critic Judy Cantor of the weekly Miami New Times noted later that the woman next to her sobbed, "It's so beautiful -- and so sad," referring to the country's deterioration. Cantor also said that for older exiles, "One of the big reasons it's OK to listen is that it's pre-revolutionary music, not the music of today's Cuba." But even that isn't good enough for some anti-Castroites, explained 60-year-old, Cuban-born Ophelia Martín Hudson, although she enjoyed the film: "The wound is still there. It's like asking Jews during the Holocaust to listen to German music."
Even in Miami, though, the film overpowered that sort of lingering resentment. As Nat Chediak, the film festival director, remarked contentedly afterward while puffing on a (non-Cuban) cigar, "The film succeeds because music transcends politics."
